


The Ten Commandments Don't Apply To Angels

by copperbadge



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blasphemy, Fallen Angels, M/M, Religion, envy - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-15
Updated: 2009-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-11 20:59:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/803212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean keeps insisting Castiel do things that humans do; sometimes Castiel is grateful for this, and sometimes...not so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ten Commandments Don't Apply To Angels

**Author's Note:**

> Beta thanks to Foxy and Dove!
> 
> This was written near the end of S4, so has now been Jossed, at least I assume (I stopped watching). It was fun to examine the concept of how an angel might cope with human life. 
> 
> SadCypress has podficc'd "The Ten Commandments Don't Apply To Angels", and you can **[find the recording for download here](http://community.livejournal.com/sadtreepodfic/3680.html)**.

I. Thou Shalt Not Kill

Castiel has been Fallen -- he refuses to think of himself as human -- for about eight weeks, and he is seriously considering breaking one of his Father's commandments. 

Oh, he's not really going to kill Dean. But by the philosophy of many churches, which Castiel has learned about from Sam's books, to think of the deed is to commit the deed. And there are times he just wants to _shut. Dean. Up._ Angels smite. They smite wrathfully! 

Dean leans back on the counter stool in the diner and elbows him in the ribs for the millionth time (actually only the two hundred and secondth time -- he's kept count -- but Castiel understands the power of exaggeration). 

"The waitress is checking you out," he says. "Score us some free pie."

"That would be wrong," Castiel says flatly. 

"Ask her out!"

"Ask her where?" Castiel inquires. His face is bland, because they both know it's an excuse, but Castiel has no stirring of affection for the woman who, at the end of the meal, leaves her phone number on the check she passes him.

Dean hoots and laughs about this for days.

It's been a long eight weeks. 

II. Thou Shalt Not Steal

"This is how you earn your way?" Castiel had asked them, at the start of it. "Theft? Grift? _Lying?_ "

"Hunting don't pay," Dean said, and Sam made that _Hey, I didn't ask for this_ face. "Like you didn't know? I thought angels knew everything."

This is a jab, and it hurts. Castiel had never thought about how these two young men made their way in the world.

"Angels don't pay for things," he said.

"Great. We're angels," Sam said to Dean, and they grinned at each other in a way that set Castiel's new teeth on edge.

III. Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Goods

Castiel knows he will never be to Dean what Sam is to Dean. He doesn't want to replace Sam.

He just wants them to look at him that way too sometimes. He wants Dean and Sam to see him, but especially Dean. 

He spends every waking moment with them and yet he has never ever felt so lonely. 

IV. Thou Shalt Remember the Sabbath and Keep It Holy

"Look, you're human now," Dean said.

"I am not," Castiel said. "I'm Fallen."

"Yeah, but basically the same thing, right?"

Castiel shakes his head. 

"Okay, fine, whatever," Dean says. "You're in a human body. You gotta do human stuff."

Castiel remembers the first time he -- and they -- realised he would have to eat. He had felt empty, but perhaps humans felt that way all the time, divorced as they were from the heavenly host. And then he had felt pain, and yearning for something, and he'd quietly bent over in the back seat of the Impala, holding his arms against his stomach. Surely it would pass.

"Hey, could you eat?" Dean said to Sam, in the front, and then turned around to the back seat. "I could eat. Hey Cas, are you -- "

The Impala had slammed to a stop and then Dean and Sam were there with him in the back seat, asking what was wrong, and Castiel didn't _know_. But they gave him water and a Clif Bar and he'd felt better. Perhaps that was how people felt, after Communion.

He didn't know about bathing, either, except in a theoretical "And then she washed his feet" kind of way. At least Dean had realized that if he didn't understand hunger he wouldn't understand much else, and that night he'd shown him how to get the little pools of shimmery shampoo out of the bottles. Dean had crouched by the bathtub in the horrible motel, sleeves rolled up, barefoot, while Castiel experimentally "washed his hair" for the first time. 

Castiel didn't know it could feel so awful to be unclean, or so good to be clean. 

And how could an angel not know the glory of clean skin? 

V. Thou Shalt Honor Thy Father And Thy Mother

Castiel prays, every night, but it's a hollow thing; when he prayed as an angel, _someone_ would answer, even if it wasn't necessarily the answer he wanted. Now, there's just yawning silence. 

"Were you praying?" Sam asks him.

"Yes," Castiel says. 

"I pray too," Sam says.

Sam Winchester did unspeakable things to and with a demon. He has killed. He is unholy in every possible sense of the word.

And yet...he is not damned. Perhaps there is hope for Castiel too.

Dean just snorts at them from the table where he's cleaning his gun.

"God-botherers," he says, shaking his head. 

"I love my Father," Castiel insists.

"Fuck your dad, I haven't seen him around lately," Dean retorts. 

Somehow, Dean always knows the right thing to say.

After that, Castiel still prays, but he doesn't really hope for an answer anymore. 

VI. Thou Shalt Not Take The Lord's Name In Vain

The first time Castiel is injured, really injured, he's so stunned by it that he can't think. The pain lances up his arm and doesn't go away when he tells it to, it just keeps on stabbing, oh god, it's a thousand times worse than hunger-pain, it's a hundred times worse than stub-your-toe pain, it hurts so much. 

"Cas -- ? _Jesus_ , Cas," Dean yells, but Castiel is curled tightly around his wounded arm, rocking back and forth because that's all he can do, keening in pain and misery. Why would God allow His favored to feel this way? Why would his Father allow his human brothers and sisters to hurt and hurt without end, without respite -- 

Castiel passes out. 

He comes awake and the pain is _still there_ , but far away. For a minute he feels like an angel again.

"Dean," he murmurs. Dean is his responsibility, especially if he's an angel -- 

No, he's not. He recognises the tubes and wires, the white starched bed linens. He is in a hospital. They have put drugs in him. That's not fair. He didn't want them to put drugs in him. But they do help with the pain.

"Fucking shit, Cas," Dean says -- oh, Dean is there, that's good. "I thought you were going insane."

"No," Castiel says. "It hurt."

"I know," Dean replies, and rests a hand on his bandaged arm. "It'll go away."

"When?" Castiel asks, hating how pitiful he sounds, like the littlest of the children that God has clearly abandoned. Dean smiles, at least, and not in pity either.

"Man up. It'll be over soon," he tells him, but it isn't. Weeks later, his arm still twinges when he lifts it to rub shampoo out of his hair, or put a shirt on, or shoulder the rifle that Sam bought for him when they were passing through Texarkana. 

Castiel learns to swear, because somehow it helps with the pain, and cursing his Father for the pain is the only vengeance he has left.

VII. I Am The Lord Thy God; Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me

Castiel has never seen his Father. He sees pictures of Him now, or at least what humans think He must look like: in Sam's books, in churches, on the television even. 

"Alanis Morisette: hot God, or hottest God?" Dean asks. 

"That's blasphemy," Castiel says, because he doesn't really get the whole "hot" concept, even though Dean and Sam have tried to explain it to him. He feels no desire for women, and certainly not for a woman pretending to be his Father in some terrible film. 

He looks and looks, but he never sees a God anywhere that looks like he thought his Father would.

Still, he thinks about it less with each passing day. Sam and Dean are always teaching him new things. Sometimes he watches them and learns what _not_ to do, but that's uncharitable. 

Sam bought him the rifle in Texarkana, from a pawnshop, and taught him how to disassemble and clean and reassemble it. Dean taught him how to pack shell casings with rock salt and about the different calibers of the firearms they handled. Dean taught him how to shoot, too, arm alongside his, voice in his ear, and Castiel felt like he must do well at this, he must make Dean proud. He wanted to be a good student, and he told himself there was no shame in that. After all, what else could it be, this desire to please Dean Winchester?

At the end of the day, he thinks about how he was brought into existence knowing how to be an angel. 

He had to be taught how to be a person.

And God wasn't there for that. 

VIII. Thou Shalt Not Lie

The lies come so easily to him, in the company of the Winchesters. They teach him how to defraud credit card companies ("They're all thieving assholes anyway, it's not really stealing") and pose as a cop or a detective or even sometimes a doctor ("Confidence. Confidence, Cas, come on") and how to charm information out of unwilling and frightened people. He's very good at it; Sam says it's natural talent, Dean says it's Castiel's big baby blues. 

"Chicks fall for that like dominos," he says. 

"I'm not interested in chicks," Castiel replies.

"Everyone's interested in chicks. Listen, you do know what sex is, right?" 

"Of course," Castiel says, affronted.

"Ever had it?"

"No!" 

"Ever seen someone having it?"

"Dean, no."

"Well, I don't know. Ever dream about having it?"

" _Dean!_ "

"Hey, I like sex," Dean says, and his eyes light up. "You know what we gotta do? We gotta get you laid."

Thus began eight weeks of it -- the nudges, the winks, the talking-him-up to women, but Castiel doesn't think about women or dream about women (dreams are so frightening; angels never dream). 

Castiel has never lied to Sam and Dean since they took him in. Except for the one lie, not really even so much a lie, because he didn't say he didn't dream about sex.

Just...not sex with women. 

Sometimes Castiel wonders if he'll go to hell when he dies.

IX. Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Wife

They end up in Chicago for a little while, and Castiel is unsettled by how much he likes it. He has seen every possible sin, as an angel, and he thought he knew the Mind of Man pretty well, but nine weeks in a human body have convinced him that angels know nothing of mortals, even less than mortals know of angels. He could never go back, and he thinks often of Anna's courage in recovering her grace. It's not that he loves being human, it's just that...

Well, angels are such _pricks_ , and they don't understand anything at all. 

So he likes it, the seething throb of humanity that is the city. He goes walking at night, wearing a borrowed revolver from Sam in a shoulder-holster because Dean knows Cas can take care of himself but also that it pays to be smart. Dean had a date with "a hot librarian" and Sam had a date with the library, so Castiel is at loose ends that particular night. 

He ends up in some cafe on the north side, with tiny spike-haired waiters and two women laughing at each other over a slice of shared cake in the corner. He's not sure why he's here. 

But he sees two men standing outside, fingers twined together, and there's an empty hollow in his chest -- like hunger-pain, only not. Like when he thinks about his lost grace, only somehow more real. Because Grace really is just a thing, and people are actual real people, and he wants what those men have. 

He walks back to the flophouse hotel in the dark, past the gay bars and the late-night cafes. He's sure he could go into any one of them and find someone and try to fill up the hollow place; he's an attractive man with big baby blues and he knows how to charm. 

But he has seen mortals try that before, and perhaps for some this is the way, but not for him. The hollow place has a name, so it's not just a yearning. It's a loss, a loss waiting to happen. 

He knows what he wants; he just can't have it. 

X. Thou Shalt Not Adulter

He reaches his breaking point sometime in the tenth week. Sam's gone off to get some food and he and Dean are cleaning the guns in companionable silence when Dean says, "So, are you scared of doing it wrong or something? Because we could get a hooker."

Castiel grits his teeth. "I am not _afraid_ of sex. Or women. Or indeed venereal disease. Or unexpected pregnancy."

"That's good, because you'd look like crap pregnant."

"I do not want a hooker," Castiel says.

"Look, you'd be way less frustrated -- "

Castiel slams down the cleaning cloth. "I AM NOT INTERESTED IN HAVING SEX WITH A WOMAN," he shouts. 

Dean's eyes go wide, but he bounces right back. "Hey! Angel-voice! Volume down!"

"I am not interested," Castiel growls. "Did it ever occur to you that not every single person you encounter is attracted to the opposite sex? Has it never crossed your hormone-riddled mind that perhaps I don't find women appealing? That I am in fact grappling with something that most people who _claim_ to believe in our Father say is a sin?"

Dean's face goes hard and cold, the way it sometimes does, and Castiel despairs.

"What's your dad got to say about it?" Dean asks. "Yeah, nothing, that's what I thought. Since when do you care what we mere humans think, Cas? You want to go fuck a dude, go fuck a dude, see if I care."

And he turns back to cleaning, but he's -- Dean is sulking. Angry. Dean is -- 

"So, what, you got one in mind?" Dean asks, furiously reassembling the sawed-off. 

Dean is jealous. 

Castiel leans back, calculating, studying. Finally. _Finally_ it makes sense. And maybe if he's clever, Dean will look at him and see him. 

"Yes," he says. "I do. But until now I wasn't aware he was available."

Dean's head snaps up sharply. 

"It was my job to guard and protect you," Castiel says softly. "It was my -- job to love you. It wasn't as easy as I thought, at first. But it was my duty, and then it was the only thing I cared about. When I fell you took this duty on yourself. You and Sam didn't have to care for me."

"Sure we did," Dean mutters.

"No, you didn't, and I didn't deserve it. But you did it anyway. You and Sam cared for me. But I loved _you,_ Dean."

Castiel's first ever kiss is messy. There's...there's a lot of saliva, and he's not sure what to do with his tongue and he bites Dean's lip by mistake. But it's also vital and beautiful and _human_. 

When Sam gets back with dinner, there's a sock hanging on the knob of the motel room.

"Fucking _finally_ ," he mutters, and goes to sit on the hood of the Impala and eat his cheeseburger.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Ten Commandments Don't Apply to Angels [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2744054) by [sadcypress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadcypress/pseuds/sadcypress)




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